Nine Chapters of Strange Cases

Chapter 147 Professional Corpse Destroyer

"That's it!"

Voices came from both sides at the same time. A row of heads were sticking out from both sides of the wall. The five members of Dai Shi's family and the seven members of Old Yu's family next door all poked their heads out and were nodding in unison.

Zhou Zhao even saw that the infants in swaddling clothes were being held and looking in this direction.

It must be because the commotion of catching the pig was too great, and then the officials came to the door. With such a commotion, who could resist watching?

Zhou Zhao thought for a moment and looked at Min Zangzhi. This fellow's face was as black as the bottom of a pot. He had obviously thought about his miserable state earlier, which had been seen by everyone! He had absolutely no demeanor of a scholar!
Without hesitation, she walked to the wall next to the alley and carefully looked it over. Finally, her gaze fell on one spot where there was a clear sliding mark on the moss on the top of the wall. It looked very new, indicating that someone had climbed over the wall in the past two days.

Zhou Zhao thought for a moment, then looked at the person on the wall, "Who is Old Yu?"

An elderly man with gray hair raised his hand tremblingly, "Sir, that is me."

Zhou Zhao nodded and pointed to a young girl perched on the wall. "Come down here, I have something to ask you."

The little girl's face immediately changed. She pointed at herself in horror, "M-M-M-Sir, are you asking me something?"

"That's you!"

The little girl hesitated for a moment, then jumped down from the wall. Zhou Zhao walked out of the courtyard gate and stopped the little girl in the alley. "What's your name? What time was the dog barking last night?"

The little girl shuddered. "My name is Yu Si Niang. Last night, the dog barked at 9:45 PM, two or three times. I was sleeping in the house at the time, and I heard my father yelling at the dog against the wall next door in the yard. He had a loud voice, and I was so startled that I woke up."

"Besides the barking dogs and cursing, what else did you hear at the time? For example, someone passing by in the alley, someone emptying chamber pots, a night watchman, or perhaps a patrolling Northern Army soldier?"

Yu Si Niang hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. "I didn't hear anything."

As Zhou Zhao spoke, he walked to the gate of the Dai family's courtyard, pointed to a boy who looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, and beckoned him to come out.

"Did you hear dogs barking and Old Yu cursing last night? What time was it?"

Her voice was very soft, just like when she asked the young lady of the Yu family earlier.

The boy remained calm and blurted out, "The dog barked two or three times last night at 1:45 PM. I was sleeping soundly when I heard the dog barking and Old Man Yu's cursing, which startled me awake."

Zhou Zhao's gaze gradually deepened.

"After you woke up in fright, did you hear any other noises, such as a cart carrying chamber pots passing by, or the sound of Northern Army horses' hooves, or the sound of the night watchman striking the gong?"

The boy hesitated for a moment, then thought for a moment and said, "I heard the night watchman's voice, so I knew it was exactly three quarters past 9 PM."

Zhou Zhao's expression turned cold, and he said loudly, "Bring all three families back to the Court of Justice."

The young boy from the Dai family panicked instantly. He turned his head anxiously to look at his parents who were leaning against the wall, tears welling up in his eyes.

Zhou Zhao ignored him and looked towards the long alley. Su Changying rode his horse at full speed toward them, followed by Han Ze, who was covered in sweat.

"Following Lord Xiao Zhou's instructions, escort all the people back to the Court of Justice."

As soon as Su Changying's cold voice fell, the Northern Army immediately took action, arresting the Dai family, the Yu family, and Gan Lin, the woman who fed the pigs.

"My lord, my lord, is there some misunderstanding? We are all good people, we didn't kill anyone. Didn't you just see traces of someone climbing over the wall? Maybe someone came last night and threw bones into my pigsty, and the dog barked because it saw strangers."

None of us killed anyone.

Upon hearing this, everyone nodded in unison. The sight of more than a dozen people with their arms held down nodding in unison was particularly eerie.

Zhou Zhao's gaze swept across everyone's faces. "Whether you committed murder or not, I cannot say for sure, but I do know that you colluded beforehand to give false testimony to the authorities. Deceiving the authorities is also a crime."

As Zhou Zhao spoke, ignoring the wails of the crowd, he walked toward Gan Lin's room.

"The house was very clean, quite different from the pigsty outside. Someone must have cleaned it on purpose."

Zhou Zhao was surprised for a moment after hearing Su Changying's words, then his eyes softened a bit. "If this is a place where bodies are dismembered, then blood will definitely flow everywhere. Especially since they did such a brutal thing as butchering, it will take a lot of effort to clean it up."

As Zhou Zhao spoke, he walked towards the kitchen, which was still damp and not completely dry after being washed with water.

Zhou Zhao and Su Changying exchanged a glance, and the two of them carefully inspected the kitchen.

"Zhou Zhao, come and see!"

Hearing Su Changying's call, Zhou Zhao walked towards the corner of the wall. There, behind the pile of firewood, was a small wine jar. Su Changying had already moved the jar, revealing a small hole underneath.

Zhou Zhao leaned closer and looked down, and found that there was another identical jar buried inside.

She reached out to take it, but Su Changying stopped her, saying, "Let me do it."

Su Changying first poked the jar with her longsword, and seeing that there was no movement inside, she reached in with peace of mind, grabbed a handful of things, and threw them on the ground.

Zhou Zhao looked closely and saw that there was a jade pendant with excellent water content, a gold armlet, a silver hairpin, silver earrings, and even a bracelet woven from withered vines, as well as a wolf hair brush and a headscarf.

The two exchanged a glance, their expressions both very solemn.

These things clearly did not belong to the same person. Either there were bandits in Gan Lin's house who robbed and plundered, or there were petty thieves hiding there; or, the dead in the pigsty were not just the owner of the "hand bone" they had seen.

This could very well be a serial murder and dismemberment case.

Zhou Zhao thought for a moment, then gave Su Changying a look. She spread the headscarf out on the ground, then found a flint and lit the oil lamp on the kitchen wall. Su Changying understood and took out everything inside, placing it on the headscarf.

There are seventeen items in total.

After confirming that there was nothing else inside, Zhou Zhao and Su Changying searched the kitchen carefully and found three suspicious places.

“I have a red rope here. We’ll mark each place so that Min Zangzhi can keep a record. The first place is on the pile of firewood. We found a piece of bone on one of the firewood. It must have been splashed there when the body was being dismembered with a cleaver.”

Zhou Zhao's voice was not quiet, and the three families who were being held captive in the courtyard all turned pale upon hearing it.

"The second spot is in the gap between the stove and the wall. It must have been when the bones were being chopped, and the blood flowed down the cutting board. This corner was missed when the water was being used to clean it. The third spot is inside the stove. The pigs ate the corpses, but the hair was very difficult to find."

They threw the hair into the stove to burn it, but a strand wasn't completely burned and clung to the stove opening.

After Zhou Zhao finished speaking, he and Su Changying left the kitchen one after the other.

Su Changying looked at Han Ze and said, "Arrange for people to search carefully, even if it means digging three feet into the ground, to thoroughly search the homes of these three families."

Zhou Zhao raised the cloth bundle in his hand and looked coldly at Gan Lin.

"You should recognize this person, right? It seems you've not only given false testimonies, but also killed quite a few people."

Gan Lin's face changed drastically. Her knees buckled and she knelt on the ground with a thud, immediately bursting into tears. "My lord, I'm innocent! My lord! We didn't kill anyone. We just helped clean up the body. Someone threw the body in. As long as we helped destroy the evidence, we were given a silver ingot!"
"We're all innocent! We really didn't kill anyone! Your Honor, you must believe us! We just chopped up the body and fed it to the pigs."